You guys received NME’s Album of the Year last year. What was that like? Well, that’s what they said in the review, so it was nice. We certainly didn’t expect it. We made this album ourselves with 300 quid in a disused office in Staines. We certainly didn’t think anyone would say it was album of the year but we did expect it to stand up against everything else, definitely. We were confident when we were making it that it was really cool. Critical acclaim is one thing but when people come up to you in the street and say ‘this was my favourite album all year’ that really means something.
Recently we’ve seen the Arctic Monkeys be put through the hype machine. Can it kill you? I think it can. If they can have a really good second album they’ll be okay. That’s what happens in the UK. They’ll build someone up so much and then knock ’em down again, which isn’t very nice of them but the press put so much pressure on them. Good luck to the Arctic Monkeys. I think they’re a really great band but the amount of press that they’ve got, the amount of plaudits that have been thrown at them is amazing. We didn’t have hype as much as that. Our album did pretty well and it stayed up there until we broke through to the people who don’t read that cool magazine and maybe don’t move in those kind of circles. As soon as we got through to those people, after 21 weeks our album went to number one. We’re really proud of that.
When you return to record a second album will you go back to a DIY ethos, or get an extravagant studio? We’ll still make it ourselves. Perhaps we’ll have an engineer in there. Perhaps we’ll go crazy and actually buy some chairs so we can sit down while we’re making it.
Speaking of DIY, tell us about filming the ‘Cash Machine’ video… We made two ‘Cash Machine’ videos. Because there was so much illegal activity in the first one we had to make a second one. The first one we made by ourselves for about 200 quid, which mostly went on beer and pizzas. We were thinking about videos that we liked. There was a U2 video in which a very obvious CGI plane flies over while they’re playing and we thought, well, we don’t have the money for computer graphics, but we do live right by Heathrow Airport, so maybe we can just jump the fence at six in the morning. That’s what we did. We threw all the stuff over, set up and played for about half an hour as planes flew over our heads. Looking back, it might not have been the most sensible thing to do. At the time we had nothing to lose. If they tried to sue us they’d have gotten a packet of crisps and a pack of fags.
So you’ve been a star of CCTV yourself? If you live in London I think you’re caught on CCTV 800 times a day. That’s what we’re about. Everyone is a star of CCTV.
Were you asked to do the World Cup song? Yeah, I think we might have been actually. We’ve turned down a lot of things. It could sell you a lot of records but it could totally kill your career as well. We’ve turned down things that could be amazing, but we’re just not into it. We were in the running for a $30 million McDonald’s advert and there was just no way we were going to do it, even though it may have sold us 10 million records. You have to keep your integrity. Even though we absolutely love football and we’re going to make it to one of the World Cup semi-finals, which we’re over the moon about, we’re not going to do a football song, no thank you.
Have you heard Embrace’s song? I haven’t heard it yet but the stories I’ve heard, ha ha ha, have not been good. So you know, we’ll leave it to them.
Are you worried about Rooney? I am, yes. If you want to talk about football this is not a good time to be injuring your metatarsal. What’s going on, man? It’s in his foot, if it was in his hand he’d be alright but oh no, it’s gotta be in his foot, and his kicking foot. Fingers crossed, he can come back, he’s a young guy, he’ll probably get fit quickly. We’ll take him anyway, even if he’s in a stretcher. Michael Owen has also had a little injury so we could be striker-less, which would not be a good thing.
Can we expect to see you out in Australia anytime soon? I believe, if this is a world exclusive, then we will be coming some time in September. We’re really looking forward to coming.
Stars Of CCTV is out now through Warner.
